PETRARCH THE CRITIC AND READER 



when printing was unknown and manuscripts were ex- 

 pensive, the transmission of Kterature was more or less 

 oral. The jongleur was still extant, and came to Pe- 

 trarch, just as his predecessors used to go, two centuries 

 before, to the Provencal poets; and he entertained not 

 merely the mob in the square, but kings (see Sen., v, 2). 

 Petrarch writes to Boccaccio: "You are famihar, no 

 doubt, with that widely distributed and vulgar set of 

 men who live by words (and those not their own), and 

 who have increased to such an irritating extent among 

 us. They are persons of no great abihty, but of reten- 

 tive memories. They haunt the antechambers of kings 

 and potentates, naked, were it not for the poetic vesture 

 they have filched from others. Any especially good bit 

 which this or that author has turned ofif they seize 

 upon, particularly if it is in the mother tongue. In this 

 way they strive to gain the favor of the nobility, and 

 procure money, clothes, or other gifts. Their stock in 

 trade is partly picked up here and there, partly ob- 

 tained directly from the writers themselves, either by 

 begging or, when cupidity or poverty is encountered, 

 for money. You can easily imagine how often those 

 fellows have pestered me. It is true that I suffer less 

 than formerly, owing to my altered studies.'' He then 

 proceeds to tell how the minstrels have been made rich 

 by his poems. Such an audience, Petrarch declares, he 

 does not desire. 



One is not altogether sure of this: he is too avid of 

 praise not to welcome a tribute, whatever be the source. 



84 



